Szlichting v Circuit Court Zielona Gora
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Sir Ross Cranston |
| Judgment Date | 24 March 2017 |
| Neutral Citation | [2017] EWHC 1006 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | CO/737/2017 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 24 March 2017 |
[2017] EWHC 1006 (Admin)
Sir Ross Cranston
(Sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
CO/737/2017
CO/5856/2016
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Miss Saoirse Townshend (instructed by Lawrence & Co) appeared on behalf of the Appellant
Miss Catherine Brown (instructed by Crown Prosection Service, Extradition Unit) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
Before me this afternoon there are two matters concerning the extradition of Raphael Szlichting ("the appellant"). For convenience, these have been linked by the court.
The first matter is an accusation European arrest warrant ("EAW") where leave to appeal has been granted by Mrs Justice Lang. In this case District Judge Branston ordered the extradition of the appellant on 14 November 2016. The accusation warrant had been issued by the Polish Judicial Authority on 29 July 2016 and was certified by the National Crime Agency on 29 August 2016. In this warrant the appellant is wanted for two offences committed in March 2013: first, driving whilst under the influence of drugs, and secondly, giving false details to the police. Permission to appeal was granted in relation to the first offence, namely the driving offence, but subsequently Mrs Justice Lang gave permission to the appellant to amend his grounds to add a point regarding Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights ("ECHR" of "the Convention").
As detailed in this EAW, the first offence is that on 21 March 2011 in Racula, Lubiskie Province, the appellant drove a BMW vehicle being under the influence of drugs. The warrant does not condescend to any more detail regarding that offence. However, on 23 September 2016 the Polish prosecutor explained that on examination the appellant's blood revealed 9-THC carboxylic acid at a concentration of 46 nanograms/millilitres, and amphetamine at a concentration of 194 nanograms/millilitres. The information from the Polish prosecutor added that the appellant was under the influence of a psychotropic substance and amphetamines, after the use of a drug from the group tetrahydrocannabinol.
At the hearing before the District Judge on 27 September 2016 the appellant sought an adjournment because he was unrepresented. That was refused. Miss Brown, representing the Judicial Authority, who also represents it today, also applied for an adjournment to obtain further information in respect of this first offence. That application was also refused.
The hearing continued. Miss Brown, quite properly, drew the judge's attention to the dual criminality requirements of Section 10 and Section 64 of the Extradition Act 2003 ("the 2003 Act") in the context of driving under the influence of drugs. In the law of England and Wales there are two relevant offences. First, there is Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 which provides for the offence of driving or being in charge of a vehicle when under the influence of drugs or drinks. Section 4 (5) reads:
"(5) For the purposes of this section, a person shall be taken to be unfit to drive if his ability to drive properly is for the time being impaired."
There is a series of cases before this court, most recently the decision of Mr Justice Irwin in Grabowski v Regional Court in Wloclawek [2014] EWHC 3602 Admin, which clearly state the law in this area, that for the dual criminality requirements to be satisfied for this offence the inevitable or only reasonable inference must be that a person was so intoxicated by drink or drugs as to be unfit to drive.
The second relevant offence in the law of England and Wales is Section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988. That was introduced by amending legislation in 2013 and did not come into effect until March 2015. Thus, it was not in force at the time of the appellant's offending. It creates an offence of driving a motor vehicle with a concentration of specified controlled drugs above specified limits. Those drugs and the corresponding limits are contained in The Drug Driving (Specified Limits) (England and Wales) Regulations 2014, as amended. For amphetamine, the limit is 250 microgrammes per litre of blood; for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol it is 2 microgrammes per litre of blood.
The District Judge held that the first offence in the European arrest warrant met the dual criminality requirements of those sections. After referring to Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, in particular Section 4 (5), he said as follows:
"The judicial authority has confirmed that there were lots of drugs in the appellant's blood, 46 nanograms of 9-tetrahydrocannabinol per millilitre and 194 nanograms of amphetamine per millilitre. These are equivalent to 46 micrograms per litre and 194 micrograms per litre respectively. I note that legal limits now set down in this country [in other words, the District Judge was referring to Section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988] are 2 microgrammes of 9-tetrahydrocannabinol per litre and 250 microgrammes of amphetamine per litre. Though the exact effects of drugs on a person's ability to drive may depend on a number of factors such as size, gender, tolerance, etc., it is clear that it is anticipated that anyone with drug levels at or above the legal limit of this country will be impaired in their driving. The appellant's levels of the constituent of cannabis are hugely above the legal limit from which I can infer that his ability to drive at the time was impaired, and probably very impaired. The fact that he had amphetamine in his system below the legal limit here only adds to the strong inference that his ability to drive was impaired."
To my mind, the comparison which the District Judge drew between the current legal limits for an individual to drive a vehicle and the figures provided by the Judicial Authority was open to him and entitled him to the inevitable inference that the appellant's ability to drive the vehicle was impaired at the relevant time. In other words, the District Judge was in my view entitled to reach the conclusion he did.
However Miss Brown has very fairly drawn attention to a difficulty for the Judicial Authority's case in the warrant and the prosecutor's further information. As I have said, the warrant did not condescend to detail. The further information of 23 September 2016 referred to a drug "9-THC carboxylic acid" and a drug from the group of tetrahydrocannabinol. That wording does not definitely demonstrate that one of the drugs in the appellant's system at the time of the alleged offending was in fact delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. That being the case, it seems to me that the District Judge was entitled to proceed on the basis that he did.
Miss Brown seeks the admission of further information from the Judicial Authority dated 22 March 2017, that in the course of the pre-trial proceedings in Poland the evidence was that the use of the drugs had impaired the appellant's ability to drive motor vehicles. In my view, even if admitted, that evidence does not overcome the difficulty in the identification of the substance found in the appellant's blood, in...
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Damian Baciejowski v District Court in Koszalin, Poland
...and whose circumstances had engendered for the whole family a ‘false sense of security’ . 9 Secondly, Szlichting v Poland [2017] EWHC 1006 (Admin) (Sir Ross Cranston, 24.3.17). Mr Szlichting was wanted for extradition to Poland, inter alia, on an accusation EAW (7.16) to face trial for an ......